Users access web applications on remote web servers. In one example, the web applications allow users to purchase certain products or services online. However, the user may experience problems while conducting the online purchase. For example, the web application may crash every time the user selects an icon on a web page used for an online purchase. In another situation, the user may not be able to determine how to complete the online product purchase from the instructions displayed on the web page. In a different situation, the web application may prevent the user from selecting particular items. In yet another situation, the web site may slow down or crash during certain periods of time or for particular operations. These are just a few of the many problems that may arise during an online network session.
These problems can negatively effect an e-commerce business. For example, a negative user experience during the online session may cause a potential customer to give up and abort the purchase of a particular product. Even worse, the potential customer may stop visiting the enterprise web site. Accordingly, it is important to be able to monitor user experiences during commercial online sessions and identify any problems.
Systems currently exist for monitoring web sites. However, these systems do not capture all of the information necessary for reproducing a network session. For example, certain problems may arise while a user enters information into fields on a particular web page. However, some of these errors may never be sent over the network to the web server that operates the web session. Further, some of these errors may never be persisted or noticed anywhere either on the web server or on the user terminal operating the web session. Thus, certain network session problems that a user may experience can not currently be reproduced and analyzed.
The present invention addresses this and other problems associated with the prior art. The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become more readily apparent from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.